Tag Archives: online

May Strata 2012 will occur online this year. The cost is zero, and the event is tomorrow (May 16, 2012). The only catch is that you must register first. The entire conference is scheduled to take place in the morning, so the format looks quick. Judging from other Strata videos I have seen, I would guess this will be an event of high quality.

Just yesterday, MIT and Harvard University announced a new partnership to offer online education. The goal is to increase learning for students on-campus and others throughout the globe. Both schools plan to study the results of edX to better understand how students learn and how technology affects learning.

EdX Video Announcement

How will this affect Data Science Learning?

It is too early to know exactly what courses will be offered, but given MIT’s strength in engineering, those courses would seem reasonable. I am guessing (and hopeful) that many courses pertinent to data science will be offered by edX. Also, the announcement is most likely a response by MIT and Harvard to compete with Coursera, a company started by 2 Stanford University faculty. Obviously, the elite schools do not want to be outdone by each other. In any case, I only see these new and different methods for education as a good thing. Happy Learning!

Having trouble keeping track of what schools offer what courses for free online? Problem solved!

Class Central maintains a updated list of courses from Coursera(Stanford), Udacity, MITx, and others as they become available. Not all of the courses are related to data science, but I still thought it was valuable to share the link.

Previously I mentioned that online statistics learning resources are not abundant.

Well, here is a new online book for learning statistics. It is geared towards programmers, and it looks to be a great fit for people wanting to learn data science. Here is a small excerpt from the Preface:

It emphasizes the use of statistics to explore large datasets.

I have only had time to quickly browse the book, but it looks quite good.

Statistics – This is a topic that could use some more attention from the online community.
I would love to see Stanford (or Coursera) offer a free statistics course online much like the other free courses online.

I did find a series of Youtube videos by Daniel Judge, a Professor in the East Los Angeles College Mathematics Department. The videos start at the very beginning of statistics. I have watched a couple of the videos, and they seem quite good. Daniel does a nice job of explaining the information. Here is the first video in the series.

Stay tuned to the blog in case other stats options appear online. Also, please leave a comment if you know of some good online statistics resources.